"Unreasonable at Sea" will take 11 companies to 14 countries over 105 days.

When you think "business mentor," you don’t usually think of South African archbishop (and human rights activist) Desmond Tutu—and yet, he’s one of 17 people who have agreed to spend some unpaid time aboard a ship with a team of 11 startups as they circumnavigate the globe.

"I really did have scrambled eggs with him yesterday," Catlin Powers, of One Earth Designs, told Ars. She’s the chief operating officer and co-founder of a company that makes products to be used in rural and rugged environments, including a solar cooker.

On Tuesday, the group that calls itself Unreasonable at Sea (UAS) made its first landfall in Hawaii aboard the MV Explorer after its first week's journey. UAS is hosting entrepreneurs (including Powers) and mentors (including Tutu) as part of a larger Semester at Sea voyage, which consists of 160 undergraduate American students on a three-month journey around the globe. Other companies on the UAS roster are working on things like "open source sailing drones," and "digitally programmable and rechargeable hearing aids."

“We want to help entrepreneurs scale into new international markets,” Daniel Epstein, Unreasonable Institute’s founder, said to Ars by phone in San Diego before hitting the open seas. He added that unstructured time would help these startups to grow.

Powers told Ars that earlier this week she found herself standing next to Tutu in the breakfast line and they sat together over the meal. “He asked what motivates us as people?” she said, surprised at this moment herself. “That kind of interaction is happening every moment.”

Desmond Tutu is one of the headline mentors for the voyage, which also includes top officials from Google, WordPress, Mozilla, and Priceline. Prince Fahad Al Saud of Saudi Arabia and head of User Operations Arabic at Facebook is scheduled to make an appearance as well, although he is apparently not yet aboard the ship based on his Twitter feed, which indicates that he's lounging around South Africa.

“The mentors are on board in rotation rather than all at once,” Sarah Moran, an Unreasonable Institute spokesperson, explained by e-mail.

"Black swans" on the water

One Earth Designs is one of 11 startups from around the globe that was selected for the UAS program, the maritime version of what’s normally done in landlocked Colorado at the Unreasonable Institute: a “mentorship-driven acceleration program for entrepreneurs tackling social and environmental problems.” Unreasonable is also partnering with the Institute of Design at Stanford University.

Last year, Epstein told an Indian newspaper that he was “not looking for typical Silicon Valley startups, but companies leveraging technologies to address massive social and environmental challenges,” dubbing the chosen teams “black swans.” The Unreasonable Institute is spending around $100,000 on each startup, which will be paid back via an equity stake depending on the firm’s valuation.

“Other than the investment we are placing in your company once accepted into the program, we cannot and do not guarantee that our participants will receive funding from outside venture funds or foundations,” the Institute warns. “However, we do guarantee unprecedented exposure to funders and world-class relationships with dozens of capital sources. Fundamentally, our goal is to go to bat for you, to do everything we can to get you the resources you need to rocket ahead, and like you, we are acutely aware of how important financing is to scaling your business.”

Despite those cautions, Epstein has high hopes for the group.

“For every company it varies. Our goal is to help companies hit 10x growth and to do that within 36 months,” he told Ars. “That's a solid stated metric. But the other side to it is we think this is a radical experiment in international entrepreneurship and in any good experiment, we don't want to predict the outcome.”

"We didn't expect to get seasick"

The MV Explorer plans to take the 11 teams across the Pacific via Hawaii to Japan followed by stops in China, Vietnam, Singapore, Burma and India—then the ship will swing across the Indian Ocean to Mauritius, South Africa, Ghana, and finally Spain. Some of the landfalls will only be several hours (Mauritius), while others (India) will be closer to five days.

While the sea voyage for startups does seem to be a bit gimmicky, attendees say that being forced out of their normal work environment seems to help with having near-constant access to mentors like Tutu. While there are classes, lectures, and more structured time, a lot of the time is given to the teams to independently work on their companies.

“Being away from land keeps us away from the other distractions,” Anand Joshi, of Vita Beans, told Ars.

His “learning and assessment solutions” company modestly proclaims itself, based on its participation in Unreasonable at Sea, “one of the Top 11 tech companies changing the world.” Vita Beans—one of four Indian companies selected for the trip—wants to help online education for teachers.

All 11 teams have access to the ship’s facilities, including a satellite-based Internet connection where they can stay in touch with their co-workers back home via Skype, Dropbox, and other online tools. “Our goals are scale and innovation, scale up what we are already doing into new geographies,” said Amruth Ravindranath, also of Vita Beans. “We’re trying to set up meetings with publishing houses in the places we are visiting.”

He admitted that his company would prefer to have more time on land rather than at sea—but acknowledged that having a condensed time on land forces more condensed (and hopefully, more-productive) meetings with education companies in various countries. After a week at sea, both teams say that they’ve run into one problem that they didn’t fully anticipate.

"We didn't expect to get seasick,” Scot Frank, the One Earth Designs co-founder, told Ars. “[Our cabins are] bottom at the front of the boat, and we feel every single wave crashing against the side of the boat. If the next 100 days are like this, it will be a nightmare.”

But, he added, it will take a few days to gain his sea-legs, and things have been relatively smooth sailing so far.